The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex II by Charles Darwin

Author:Charles Darwin [Darwin, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

The perception, if not the enjoyment, of musical cadences and of rhythm is probably common to all animals, and no doubt depends on the common physiological nature of their nervous systems. Even Crustaceans, which are not capable of producing any voluntary sound, possess certain auditory hairs, which have been seen to vibrate when the proper musical notes are struck. 406 It is well known that some dogs howl when hearing particular tones. Seals apparently appreciate music, and their fondness for it “was well known to the ancients, and is often taken advantage of by the hunters at the present day.” 407 With all those animals, namely insects, amphibians, and birds, the males of which during the season of courtship incessantly produce musical notes or mere rhythmical sounds, we must believe that the females are able to appreciate them, and are thus excited or charmed; otherwise the incessant efforts of the males and the complex structures often possessed exclusively by them would be useless.

With man song is generally admitted to be the basis or origin of instrumental music. As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least direct use to man in reference to his ordinary habits of life, they must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed. They are present, though in a very rude and as it appears almost latent condition, in men of all races, even the most savage; but so different is the taste of the different races, that our music gives not the least pleasure to savages, and their music is to us hideous and unmeaning. Dr. Seemann, in some interesting remarks on this subject, 408 “doubts whether even amongst the nations of Western Europe, intimately connected as they are by close and frequent intercourse, the music of the one is interpreted in the same sense by the others. By travelling eastwards we find that there is certainly a different language of music. Songs of joy and dance-accompaniments are no longer, as with us, in the major keys, but always in the minor.” Whether or not the half-human progenitors of man possessed, like the before-mentioned gibbon, the capacity of producing, and no doubt of appreciating, musical notes, we have every reason to believe that man possessed these faculties at a very remote period, for singing and music are extremely ancient arts. Poetry, which may be considered as the offspring of song, is likewise so ancient that many persons have felt astonishment that it should have arisen during the earliest ages of which we have any record.

The musical faculties, which are not wholly deficient in any race, are capable of prompt and high development, as we see with Hottentots and Negroes, who have readily become excellent musicians, although they do not practise in their native countries anything that we should esteem as music. But there is nothing anomalous in this circumstance: some species of birds which never naturally sing, can without much difficulty be taught to perform; thus the house-sparrow has learnt the song of a linnet.

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